Prime Minister Edi Rama at conversation with Dutch business community representatives operating in Albania and other Dutch investors interested in expanding their business activity in our country:
Prime Minister Edi Rama, accompanied by the Minister of Infrastructure and Energy Belinda Balluku, and the Minister of Economy and Finance Delina Ibrahimaj, today held a conversation with Dutch business representatives operating in Albania, as well as other investors interested in expanding their activity in Albania.
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PM Edi Rama: I am privileged to be here with you and I would like to thank you so much for taking the time and the trouble to join us here w and share a few moments with us. Although it may seem very distant geographically, the Netherlands is pretty present in Albania.
I am very happy and honored to see Francine Houben here, who is one of the pioneers of this relationship, because she was among the first from this country to offer a very valuable contribution through her extraordinary talent and her design and architecture studio for our country.
It is also our pleasure and privilege that SHELL corporation is operating in our country, which is actually the opposite end of Francine and the architects for many reasons.
Like every good Dutchman, they are reluctant to talk about figures for now but all the signs indicate that we are about to make a very important onshore discovery of gas and oil that will not only greatly affect the future of our country, but it will also play a role in Europe’s energy future in the current circumstances and situation.
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I do not want to presuppose that there are no corruption practices and that there is no bureaucracy. Corruption and bureaucracy are existent, but the change is really, really profound and we have already transited to a situation where all our public services, at least 95% of them, are delivered online only.
So I am really confident that we are on the right track. Of course, there is still a lot to be done, but I strongly believe that time is high for more people to come and invest, as Delina said, and it is not just related to Albania.
It is certainly a small market. For SHELL this is related to the discovery of gas and oil. For Royal Haskoning it is about the design of a new port, for architects it is about the design of new addresses and maybe the size of the market doesn’t matter a lot, but the size of the market on the other hand is very important and it is precisely this we are doing through the Open Balkans initiative as we are expanding the market and providing a completely barrier-free transport in this market that extends beyond a population of 3 million to a region of around 20 million people.
– I am not speaking in my capacity as a politician or the head of the government. I speak wholeheartedly about work in Albania, not from the head but from the heart. I love the country, I have been living there for two years and from my point of view as a legal expert I want to add to the question of political stability the question “whether a foreign investor can rely on an impartial and independent judiciary.” I am doing this because I have been working side by side with the institutions for two years and there is no other place in the world – and I have been working for a long time abroad – that has accepted and implemented a system where there is a reform in justice that re-evaluates all incumbent judges. Albania has delivered on it and I think there is a lot of work to be done, but there is no other country in the world that has accepted such a thing and, in my view, I can tell you that it has a fairly modern legal system, which is reliable, impartial and independent.
PM Edi Rama: Thank you for these words, but I would say that our justice system has yet to move to where it should be as there are still problems, but what you are saying is related to what I said before, that when it comes to foreign investors, more attention and care is definitely attached so that investors encounter no troubles. This is not exactly the case when it comes to local investors, it is less so to date, as we are very good at hurting ourselves, but when it comes to foreigners it is what you said. You are right and I thank you for these words because they are helpful and coming from a witness, but we are not yet where we need to be.
We have launched an essential state-building reform in the sense of the democratic process of state-building, and the vetting overhauled the entire justice system. The question that remains is; yes, we removed almost 60% of the existing judges, but 60% of vacant positions is not something really easy to deal with and to replace them not only with judges with integrity, but also with capacity, because both capable and honest judges are needed. Employing competent but dishonest people is a problem. However, employing honest but incompetent people is also a problem. So the new judges should meet these two qualities and this is not easy.
